


damseling again

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coulson loves to play damsel in distress, Daisy Is A Superhero, Drabble, F/M, First Kiss, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-14
Updated: 2015-11-14
Packaged: 2018-05-01 15:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5210564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson has to be rescued once more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	damseling again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BrilliantlyHorrid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/gifts).



All he can taste is his own blood in his mouth.

She undoes the knots on the ropes around his feet carefully. The handcuffs on his right hand have left marks, Coulson can feel the sting, but it's probably the least painful bit right now. Daisy vibrates the metal open and he wishes he could see that better, the blood dripping over his eye clouding his vision. She must be a sight.

Daisy stands up to look at him. She seems taller, or maybe it's just the circumstances. He has never had much chance of watching her while she's on the field. He regrets that.

(he regrets... _oh god.. everything_ )

Coulson tries to smile, tell her not to worry. He's an agent, these things happen. He's too trusting, of course he was going to get betrayed. It was always in his calculations (does it make it sting less? he doesn't know). He _deserves_ it – Daisy, she never did.

"What? No _I told you so_?" he jokes.

Daisy shakes her head slowly. "No. Just a lot of _I'm really glad you're still alive_ s."

Coulson feels a weight lifted from his chest – like an invisible body had been bearing down and crushing his ribs for months. For the first time in a long time he's glad he's still alive. Rosalind, Malick, Ward. That all seems so far behind in a moment. There's just Daisy Johnson in her superhero uniform, vibrating both high security doors and Hydra footsoldiers into submission, Daisy leaning over him checking his injuries, the hair in her eyes as she frowns at the state of him.

It makes sense he's still alive until she finds him.

It makes sense that she's the one who finds him.

(it makes sense... but he doesn't deserve it)

"We need to clean this..." she says but can't find anything.

"Handkerchief," Coulson says and before he realizes his arm moves instintively, not remembering the robot hand is not there anymore. "Left pocket," he tells Daisy.

Daisy takes it out and presses her tongue against the cloth to dampen it a bit. It stings when she flattens the handkerchief against his eyebrow but then comes the relief. His vision is still blurry but at least blood has stopped dripping over. Daisy touches the wound for a moment, the pad of her index pressed to the cut. He can see her mouth twist into a worried grimace.

"I should have arrived sooner," she says quietly, almost to herself.

"Daisy..."

"Can you move at all?" she asks, looking over her shoulder to the door.

"I can't promise you anything," he says and Daisy rolls her eyes at him. It's good, it's warm, he feels her close again. He gets serious – thinks about the damage Ward and his goons have done. He'll survive (god, he'll _survive_ and that's going to be a problem, because he's going to think about consequences now) but that doesn't mean he can move. "I think I'll need a hand."

" _Coulson_."

"No, no, it wasn't a pun. Sorry."

She wraps her arm around his back and lifts him from the chair he's been tied to for... no, actually he can't tell how long he's been here, in this room.

"Can you put your arm around my shoulder?" Daisy asks, her voice all mission focused and in control and it's beautiful to listen to.

His arm aches all over, from the cuts and bruises but also from being tied up, from tensing up when he had to get ready for the next blow (the taste of his own blood in his mouth – Coulson feels like it's never going to go away). But he somehow manages to slip it around Daisy's shoulder. She takes his hand in hers, he can only feel the smooth fabric of her gloves where he wants to feel her skin, he wants the tips of her fingers again, like when she touched his eyebrow earlier. He thinks he might be delirious from pain and blood loss.

Or he might be very, very clear-eyed for the first time.

It works, and Daisy is able to hold him up and help him walk across this horrible room.

"Okay, here we go," she says. "Let me get you home."

Coulson thinks he could cry at the word _home_ , after all that's happened between them.

And after all that's happened between them here they are in the end, with Daisy saving his ass and holding his hand and squeezing his fingers in encouragement.

Maybe he's crying, he can't tell.

"What about Ward?" he asks.

"Let me worry about Ward," she says between her teeth.

 

+

 

Many painkillers and mortifying confessions and hours of sleep later Daisy is drawing her fingertips over the marks on his right wrist, the metal of the cuff leaving a criss-cross of bruises and shallow cuts from all his struggling (he had wanted to survive, he understands now, he had wanted to deserve it). When he wakes up he's in his own his bed and Daisy is there, guarding him, crosslegged in one of his chairs. How long has she been here? Those chairs are not exactly comfortable. She is touching the wounds on his hand and arm with feather-like touches.

"Hey," she calls when she notices he's awake, stops touching him ( _no..._ ) and smiles at Coulson.

Her expression is so open, so uncomplicatedly happy. He wonders how she manages.

He tries to smile back (he woke up wondering why he wasn't still tied to that chair, why he wasn't in that room and for a moment he didn't understand being free and safe and _home_ and with her). He is beginning to see out of his right eye again and the pain on his right temple is just an annoying humming under his skull now. He doesn't remember the blows. He doesn't remember the worst of the pain. What he remembers is Daisy undoing his ropes, Daisy using her powers to free him, Daisy telling him she'd get him out of there.

"What? No _I told you so_?" he asks again.

He meant to be light and jokey and a little bit more dignified than he's been in months but Daisy looks at him and her eyes water a bit before she bites the inside of her cheek and recovers. She drops her gaze for a moment, she touches him again, her fingers down the inside of his arm, coming to rest on his pulse again. She seems to hesitate a moment before speaking.

"I'm just really glad you're still here," she says, leaning into him and pressing her lips to his gently.

His mouth no longer tastes of his own blood.


End file.
